20 Weird Ways to Remove Snow

While white snowy landscape look pretty, and might help light up a dark winter. Well, sometimes it could be just enough of the good stuff, and you will have to figure out a way to remove it from your driveway, sidewalk, yard, etc. A lot of people don’t realize how much of a hassle the snow can be. Keeping sidewalks and driveways free of ice and snow can turn into a full time job for those who live in snowy areas. These overworked souls will try anything to make clearing all that snow a little bit easier, and some of the methods they utilize can be a bit unusual. So, I will not talk about snow plowing, snow shoveling, or snow blowing, but I will tell you about some of those more weird ways to remove snow. Which of these unorthodox methods is the best way, I am not sure, so you should try them out and see what works for you. Often a combination of these snow removal methods seems to be what does the trick. Don’t worry about which order I gave them, I just felt giving each method a number to keep track of them. Also to make them easier to find, I have divided them into the Melting Methods, the Snow Fun Methods, the Dog Methods, and the Hard Work Methods.

Weird Ways to Remove Snow- The Melting Methods

I will start out this list with five methods focusing on melting the snow and ice. There are many ways to melt snow, these are the kind of methods that make the snow disappear. How you choose to melt snow will be determined by where the snow is located, how much there is to melt and whether or not you are indoors or outdoors. Applying heat, natural or man made, or chemicals directly to the snow or ice can be effective. One downside or side effect with these ice melting methods is that they could leave behind some layers of ice.

20. Pour Hot Water

The nice thing with Hot water is that it instantly melts snow, and if you can heat enough water and pour it on your sidewalk or driveway, it might be the easiest way to clear those areas of snow. The drawback of this method is that moving around several gallons of hot water is not easy, but watching hours worth of shoveling melt away in seconds may just be worth it. One way to make this method a little easier would be to connect your garden hose to the hot water in your laundry room, and spray the snow with hot water. Another drawback of this method is that water will cool down on your sidewalk and driveway and freeze to ice. But, hey that’s no problem, we solve this issue in method 19.

19. Sprinkle Salt

If you got to wild with the water in method 20, this idea might help you out. You see adding salt to frozen snow lowers the temperature at which ice melts and is an effective way to melt snow and prevent ice from forming. In fact, if you’re expecting a freeze, sprinkling some salt on walkways and sidewalks will prevent ice and snow from accumulating. Salting is a great way to remove snow and keep your driveway and sidewalk clear of frozen obstacles. Just make sure not to use this method on your grass, as it will kill your grass in the spring.

18. UV car shades

One way to remove snow is to line the ground with UV car shades to attract rays and heat up the snow. It can be a tough job if you only have a few of these shields since you’ll have to move them around to get effective results, but utilizing the sun’s rays rather than your back muscles has its benefits.

17. Hair Dryer Method

This method is probably more common for women than men, and is often very time consuming. It involves plugging in a hair blower to an extension cord and use it melt the snow. This method might be more efficient for those of you that lives in an apartment building and only needs to remove the snow from your small deck or balcony.

16. Propane Torch

Applying heat to ice will melt ice quickly, the use a Propane Torch or even a home made Flame Thrower could be an efficient way, just make sure not to put yourself, or your house on fire.

Weird Ways to Remove Snow – Methods Utilizing Snow

15. Make Snowballs

Make snowballs from unwanted, and stock up you winter artillery. A snow ball fight is an activity that is fun for the entire family, but it’s also a good way to move snow from the walkways and sidewalks of your home to areas where it won’t bother anyone, unless of course that area happens to be someone’s face.

14. Make Snow Angels

When all else fails, make snow angels! You’ll have some decorative artwork to admire and it’ll help remove snow from pathways. Get the entire family to join in the fun and your walkways and sidewalks will be clear in no time at all.

13. Build a Big Igloo

Does your wife think that you don’t spend enough time together as a family or do you feel guilty you don’t spend enough time together with your kids. Then you should try to build an enormous family sized igloo and move in for the next few weeks. Building an Igloo is a fun family activity. You could even plug in an extension cord to your house, so you get electricity in your Igloo.

12. Invite some kids over

Kids love to play in the snow, and their play significantly reduce the amount of snow. Why not arrange a party for one your kids. Feed them some candy to get them all wild, and then have them play outside in the snow for on hour. They will make snow balls, snow angles, snow castles, and stomp the snow flat. Some snow will also melt on their clothes, and they might even eat some. You will be amazed with the result.

11. Use your car

Just drive back and forth in your driveway and make the snow compact.

Weird Ways to Remove Snow – The Dog Methods

These methods will only work if you have a dog or access to a dog (maybe you can offer to watch someones dog). Your dog is your best friend and will also love to help you removing snow. You just need to be a little creative to make this work the way you want to.

10. Have Your Dog Eat It

Send my dog out to eat in all. Every time I let him out for a walk, he comes in with what one person dubbed “rabies mouth” from eating snow and having it get all over his muzzle.

9. Bury Dog Treats in It

Another way to remove snow is to bury dog treats in the snow and let Fido dig for the goods. Your dog will kick around the unwanted snow and get rewarded for his hard work. Talk about man’s best friend!

8. Have Your Dog Pee on It

Dogs always have to pee, and dog pee melts the snow. The method is time consuming, and more dogs you have and the less snow you need to get rid of the more effective the method will be. This method works best on driveway and sidewalk, but are not recommended for grassy areas of your yard.

7. Play with your dog

Dogs love to chase stuff and also play in the snow. Throw a stick or a Frisbee, and have the dog get it. As the dog runs and jumps the snow will be stomped flat. Spend some time playing with your dog in your driveway and it will soon be drivable again.

6. Have your dog pull a sled

Put a concrete block in a baby sled and have your dog pull it around. It is an efficient way to flatten the snow, and also good exercise for the dog. Reward him or her with a treat after the work is done.

Weird Ways to Remove Snow – Methods Involving Hard Work

These Methods can be really hard work, or not to bad, depending on how much snow you will need to remove.

5. Sweep the Snow

When you don’t have a shovel handy (and even when you do), try removing snow with a broom. You can sweep it off the walkways and even scoop it up with a dust pan. Rather than breaking your back with a shovel, sweeping snow can be a bit easier, especially when there isn’t a huge amount of snow on the ground. This can also be a lot harder and time consuming if you got a foot of snow in the latest snow fall.

4. Stomp on It

Get the family together to stomp on snow. It may seem like a strange idea, but trampling the snow will make it easy to walk on and less dangerous than drift snow. It might just be a good way to relieve some holiday stress as well.

3. Lay out Tarps

Lay out a series of tarps along your walkways to gather the snow, and when the snowfall stops, just lift those tarps up and let the snow slide away! Of course, the success of this method depends on a lot of factors, the size of the tarps, the length of your walkways, the amount of snowfall, and how much snow you can lift. But, if you are one of those that like to plan ahead this could be the greatest way to prevent snow from ever even touching your walkways. Oh, another problem, it is not uncommon to be windy when it snows, so you should also make sure the tarps don’t blow away before the snow lands on them.

2. Take out your Lawn Mower

Use your lawn mover to get rid of leaf, grass, and removing moss. So, why not make your lawn mower useful in the winter to by modifying it to a snow blower. Many lawn mowers can be converted to snow blowing machines that can easily move snow, while others there are clever ways to figure out how to convert. For push lawnmowers, special blades and attachments can allow the mower to blow snow. This could be a lot of work, as it is heavy to push a lawn mower in snow, and the wheels might get stuck easy, but it might be worth a shot.

1. Use a Shop Vac

Plug in your Shop Vac, and you have two options, you can blow the snow away or you can suck it up, and empty out your Shop Vac some where else. On a windy day or in tight spots the sucking snow might be your best option, otherwise blowing snow with it should work decent too. Depending on the size of the area you want to take care of this option could be very time consuming.

More ways to remove snow

Yes, there might be more weird ways to remove snow, and I don’t claim these are the best ones, the most clever ways to removed the snow, the only snow removal methods, or that I was the first person to come up with these ideas. But, these where the ones I felt like writing about. I also do not take any responsibility if you decide to try these snow removal methods out and it doesn’t work out for you, this would be completely up to yourself.